Illegal Mac file names on 2000 server...

  • Thread starter Thread starter Todd Ryan
  • Start date Start date
T

Todd Ryan

Hi all,

I need to move about 50GB of data from one Win2000 Adv Server to
another. While copying the files, I found that some illegally named
Mac files cannot be read by Windows. I had this problem once before
and ended up having our Mac guru copy all of these files by hand for
me. This project is even bigger and I don't see that as a legitimate
option.

The only relevant info on Microsoft's web site is this:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;140066

I'm not too happy that Microsoft lists the only work-around as "rename
the files". Then they go on to give a broken link to a shareware
utility that runs on a Mac. I Googled this utility and found it is
about 5 years old. No thanks.

Does anyone know of a way to administratively rename these files from
the server side? Or at least copy them as-is? How about a way to
enforce the Windows file naming rules for the Mac clients so I don't
end up in this mess again next time?

Thanks!

--Todd.
 
This may or may not help, but from a command prompt you can dir /w which
truncates to 8.3 and then delete the folder using the 8.3 context.
 
You can try accessing them as \\.\d:\data\folder\badly-named-file.txt

If you use "dir /b >myfile.txt" to list all the filenames and dump it into
Excel to filter out the illegally-named ones, you can construct a batch file
to do the renaming.

Cheers

Oli
 
(e-mail address removed) (Todd Ryan) wrote in @posting.google.com:
Hi all,

I need to move about 50GB of data from one Win2000 Adv Server to
another. While copying the files, I found that some illegally named
Mac files cannot be read by Windows. I had this problem once before
and ended up having our Mac guru copy all of these files by hand for
me. This project is even bigger and I don't see that as a legitimate
option.

The only relevant info on Microsoft's web site is this:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;140066

I'm not too happy that Microsoft lists the only work-around as "rename
the files". Then they go on to give a broken link to a shareware
utility that runs on a Mac. I Googled this utility and found it is
about 5 years old. No thanks.

Does anyone know of a way to administratively rename these files from
the server side? Or at least copy them as-is? How about a way to
enforce the Windows file naming rules for the Mac clients so I don't
end up in this mess again next time?

Thanks!

--Todd.
Click to expand...

If they are illegal filenames, a dir /x will show you 8.3 names possibly.
 
Does anyone know of a way to administratively rename these files from
the server side? Or at least copy them as-is? How about a way to
enforce the Windows file naming rules for the Mac clients so I don't
end up in this mess again next time?
Click to expand...


I never tried this with files created by a MAC, but I have been
able to rename illegally named files by using patterns with the
command line ren command. E.G. "ren c?n newname.txt" would rename
a file illegally named con to newname.txt.

To deal with multiple files, you may need to write a script or
batch file. Hope this helps.
 
Thanks for all the ideas so far. Unfortunately, none of them have
worked...

dir /w still lists the long versions of the files only.
dir /x lists nothing under the 8.3 column.
wildcards in the file name still result in an error.

All of these files have either "." at the end or a space. Both of
which are impossible to create under Windows. I think if we were
talking about files with, say, backslashes or question marks in the
name, these techniques would probably work. But they don't seem to
help with spaces or periods at the end of the file names.

Thanks again for the ideas. I'll keep working on it here. I welcome
any more possibilities.

--Todd.
 
Thanks for all the ideas so far. Unfortunately, none of them have
worked...

dir /w still lists the long versions of the files only.
dir /x lists nothing under the 8.3 column.
wildcards in the file name still result in an error.
Click to expand...

Have you tried copying/moving all the files you want to
save from the directory structure, then deleting the
directory and all its contents?
 
Hi Hemo,

Macintosh computers can use many characters for filenames that are illegal for x86-based
clients, such as * / \ < > ? and |. These are also invalid NTFS characters. Such a file cannot be
accessed by a Unicode unaware application. When a Macintosh client creates a filename on
an SFM volume, it is converted from Macintosh ANSI to Unicode by SFM before being
passed to NTFS. Because SFM does the conversion, it can define Unicode values that
invalid NTFS characters will map to. It does so by using the Private Use Area range of the
Unicode standard


The only workaround is to rename the files. A shareware Macintosh program called
Drop*Rename will allow you to search on illegal PC characters and rename them
automatically. It can be found on http://www.best.com/~bns/ChaoticSoftware/.

Thanks,
Gary
--------------------
'--'From: (e-mail address removed) (Matt Hickman)
'--'Newsgroups: microsoft.public.win2000.networking
'--'Subject: Re: Illegal Mac file names on 2000 server...
'--'Date: 17 Feb 2004 14:15:47 -0800
'--'Organization: http://groups.google.com
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'--'
'--'(e-mail address removed) (Todd Ryan) wrote in message <[email protected]>...
'--'> Thanks for all the ideas so far. Unfortunately, none of them have
'--'> worked...
'--'>
'--'> dir /w still lists the long versions of the files only.
'--'> dir /x lists nothing under the 8.3 column.
'--'> wildcards in the file name still result in an error.
'--'
'--'Have you tried copying/moving all the files you want to
'--'save from the directory structure, then deleting the
'--'directory and all its contents?
'--'
'--'--
'--'Matt Hickman
'--'


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